the abyss gazes also into you
by aitsura
Summary: He says "I love you," as they fall apart. An Aesha fic probing into the things Legault didn't tell Matthew in their A-support. (warnings for character death)


He's sitting on the hard wooden floor, knees pulled up to his chest like he's a little boy and there's something frightening outside. She wraps the blanket around herself and gets out of bed. "What's ailing you, Legault?" Aesha asks. The blank expression on his face when he looks up makes her blood run cold; she takes an involuntary step backwards. "Did you get a new assignment?"

"Yes." He looks down again, makes no move to uncurl himself from his seat by the door next to her old favorite weapon. It's useless to her now, with her ruined arm hanging limp by her side. She'd filed her remaining nails wickedly sharp and grew them long, but they're no substitute for cold steel and the rasp of a sharkskin grip. The sight of a monster with a title who preyed on his servants and the peasant girls he was charged to protect falling to his knees, and then to the ground, felled by the poison she'd coated over her blade. Poison she can no longer mix without two good hands, still splattered over a blade she cannot use with her other hand.

All of that is over, now. It is up to the others to rain righteous punishment down upon the untouchable monsters of the world, and up to Legault to carry out the tenets of Fang law and protect those who remained faithful to their cause by weeding out traitors. Except...

Except there had been disturbing rumors, lately, that the elderly veteran who had fought for the Fang for years but could no longer pick up a sword had been killed. That the young cleric who would not pick up magic to smite their foes and insisted she could help the Fang best by healing their wounded and supporting the ones who could fight had suddenly died. That the orphaned boy she left behind only cried at the sight of blades, and had also died suddenly. The monk who had joined them before the commander had married Sonia developed an aversion to killing, and died in the night soon after. Legault's face is hidden from her. She cannot read him to find the truth.

The truth, which is that he was responsible for all the deaths, because he is as loyal to the Black Fang's cause as she is. No loose ends may be left. But... all the same, the deaths of those who could no longer fight were senseless. Those who could not do their work were settled in distant villages, tiny and peaceful. Lately, though, the commander has grown distant and distracted, and his wife has grasped the reins with an iron grip. By Sonia's side is not Brendan Reed, but a stranger called Nergal with dead eyes and the stride of someone whose purpose has been so warped as to become profane. And Legault's orders come from them. The pieces click into place.

She realizes what has happened when she takes a step towards him and his hand goes for the hilt of his blade. "Legault...?"

He stands, eyes shuttered and face grim. "It has... come to the attention of our superiors that you can no longer carry out your duties as an assassin of the Fang," he says, voice flat.

"They've ordered you to kill me, haven't they?" She feels numb, all of a sudden. Her armor is across the room next to her sword, and her knife is under her pillow. She didn't think she would need it. Legault would never have hurt her before he'd been given the orders. "I'm not a traitor," she says. "I didn't do anything to endanger the Fang."

"You made a mistake," he says, as if agreeing with her. "That's all."

"And so I have to die for it?" Aesha steps back towards her bed slowly. If she can just get close enough to reach under her pillow...

"I've been ordered to dispose of you, because you are no longer useful to the Fang." He doesn't move.

"Why? This isn't our way. We don't kill innocent people, Legault!" The side of the bed hits the back of Aesha's legs.

He laughs quietly, bitterly. "Neither of us are innocent."

"Maybe I'm not, but what about that boy? The one who wouldn't touch a weapon? He would never have been useful to the Fang, but still he should have lived!" She closes her hand around the corner of her pillow. "What about that healer? You can't fix this broken world if all you do is destroy!"

"Times have changed," he says, almost gently. He closes his eyes, as if he can't bear to look at her anymore. "This is... no longer the Black Fang we knew."

"Then why are you still with them?"

He unsheathes his blade. "Because this is the only way a fellow like me knows how to live."

"They'll kill you too, in the end," she says. "When you're not useful to them anymore. When you've killed your friends and your lovers and your family, when there's nothing left of you inside, when you've killed everything that ever made you who you are."

"I know," he says.

"Then why are you doing this? If we—if you run, there's no one left to hunt you down!"

"I... can't."

"Run away with me, Legault," Aesha says, suddenly. "Let's leave this place right now. We can live somewhere they've never heard of the Black Fang. We can make a new life together."

"I'm sorry." He takes a step towards her. She flings the pillow at him, seizing her knife as soon as the pillow leaves her hand.

He cuts the pillow in half, scattering stolen goose down across the room in a snowstorm of feathers. His next strike she intercepts with her blanket, shedding it for better mobility. She lashes out; he recoils a second too late. Her blade catches him over his eye, drawing a gash down the left side of his face. Wetness runs down her face.

"I thought you were different," she says, clutching her bloody hunting knife in her mostly good hand. Her ruined arm shakes, down to the stump where once she had a forearm. A phantom prickling runs through the hand that is no longer there. "I thought you loved me."

His mouth trembles. "Aesha," he whispers. "I..."

"But you love the Fang more, don't you? Even as rotten as it's become. That's why you'll carry on after I'm gone, killing everyone else who was ever precious to you if that's what's asked of you."

"Aesha-"

"I love you, Legault. Don't do this."

"I'm sorry," he says. "I have to."

She punches him, knuckles and knife handle smashing into his nose with a crunch. Blood trickles from his nostrils. While he's stunned from the impact she rams a knee into his gut, doubling him over; she hooks her cloak with two fingers and bolts out the door. Her bare feet slap against the cold flagstones as she runs, shifting the knife to between her teeth as she awkwardly ties on her cloak one-handed. There is blood on her knuckles as she scrubs at her misty eyes.

They call him the Hurricane for a reason, though. She slows to a halt as the corridor forks, and he trots out from the side hallway she always forgets about. The one that she'd never taken as a shortcut from her room, because the compound was confusing enough as it was. The one that would have saved her two minutes of headlong flight. She could have been further away by now, could have picked up that emergency cache she'd hidden by the stables. Could have gotten properly dressed before she fled for her life, no matter that she wouldn't have made it far without stealing a horse as well.

Legault keeps his eyes on her face, away from the strip of bare hip revealed by the slit in her cloak. She takes the knife from her mouth and goes into a more stable stance. "I'm sorry," he says."

"You said that already." She doesn't lower the knife. He draws his blade again, metal hissing out of its sheath. "But you're not really sorry, are you? If you were you wouldn't do this."

He closes his eyes, swipes blood out of his left. The slash over it is still bleeding sluggishly, as is his nose. "Aesha, I-"

"No. I... I can't believe you'd do this."

"You know it's my job," he says, quietly. "It was our job, once."

"_We_ didn't remove those who had done nothing," she retorts. "_We_ didn't kill the people who would never have been a threat to the Fang. But you... _you_ do. You've become the monster we sought to purge from the world."

His eyes, when they meet hers, are damp. "I know."

"You're a coward," she says.

"I know."

Knife held clumsily in front of her (no substitute for a sword, a real sword, but her sword was useless to her balanced the way it was and at any rate with her sword arm useless she was no longer the assassin she once was) she skips forward, lightly, within reach, and stabs at him; he flits to the side only to gasp out a sound of pain as she abruptly changes her grip and turns the thrust into a slash, scoring another line over his eye and slicing through the fabric of his bandanna. Blood paints a crimson half-mask over his face as the severed bandanna flutters to the floor.

"I love you," he says, miserably, and moves too quickly for her reflexes to stop him. Once she would have been able to cut him down, but as she was then she would never have harmed him. How unfair, she thinks, as time slows and she watches the blade arc towards her with horrifying clarity. How unfair that when she needs such skill she can no longer perform such feats, not after how long she's spent recovering.

_Thunk._

She looks numbly down at the blade protruding from her chest, legs giving out suddenly. "Liar," she croaks, hardly feeling his arms around her at all. Hardly feeling anything at all, but for hot drops of liquid landing on her face. Was that blood, or...? "You're such a liar."

His eyes seem to gleam wetly, but the way he bows his head sends his now-unrestrained hair cascading forward to block what little light there is and she cannot read his face. Then the dark swallows her, and it ceases to matter at all.

* * *

"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietszche


End file.
